Murray D. Van Wagoner, who ran the Department from 1933 to 1940, was the only commissioner ever elected Governor of Michigan.
office in 1933, later to become president of Michigan Technological University, the weight tax was reduced from 55 cents to 35 cents per hundredweight. His strong stand against diversion of road funds culminated in 1938 with adoption of an amendment to the state constitution that froze 100 percent of gas and weight tax revenues for road purposes. He was the first commissioner to begin a program of beautifying the state highway system.
By the end of the 1930's, Michigan enjoyed a national reputation as a state with a top-rated highway system. Rising standards of profesionalism and growing income from federal and state sources enabled the highway department to expand and upgrade the trunkline system and make it safer and smoother for burgeoning traffic volumes. In the middle of the decade there was one car for every 3.9 residents in a population of 4.8 million.
Much of the credit for the upsurge in highway building went to Murray D. "Pat" VanWagoner, a young civil engineer from Oakland County. He succeeded Dillman in 1933 and served through 1940, the year he was elected governor–the only highway commissioner to reach that goal. An open-faced man with a wide smile and a hearty laugh, he built an agency highly conscious of public relations and preached that it needed all the dollars it was getting, and more, to ensure a good highway system. To potential raiders of the highway trust fund, VanWagoner said: "Highway engineers are technicians, not magicians. A highway system is a public utility and must be kept alive with tax dollars." Early in his administration, he hired G. Donald Kennedy and Lloyd B. "Dutch" Reid, fellow engineers and administrators from Oakland County, as his top assistants.
When the use of highway revenues for other than road purposes was banned by constitutional edict in 1938, the Legislature followed up with a law that distributed gas and weight tax proceeds among the state, the counties and the cities and villages. It set the pattern for an equitable sharing of funds for state highways, county roads and municipal streets.
VanWagoner was constantly on the move, as commissioner, as president of the American Road Builders Association, as candidate for governor, urging more state and federal aid for a better highway system. With Kennedy carrying out the assignment, he ordered a comprehensive statewide study of highway needs in Michigan, the first of its kind in the country. It laid the groundwork for Detroit's future freeway system and convinced him the state needed superhighways to meet the threat of war. A detailed study of the feasibility of a bridge across the Straits of Mackinac was made. Estimated cost: $30 million. No bridge was built but a 4,085-foot causeway was extended into the straits from the northern shore west of St. Ignace. It was
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